At the time, as I was becoming more and more recognized as a member of the LGBT community, I was sure that Billy was getting the short end of the stick. It was OK for me to be confused with a general manager of a Major League Baseball team, but I wasn’t so sure how he felt about people thinking that he was “the gay baseball player.” He’s a straight Republican, who’s married with kids, and I’m a gay Democrat with two Jack Russell Terriers. To make matters worse for him, my book, “Going the Other Way: Lesson’s From a Life in and out of Major League Baseball” came out in the summer of 2003. It spread through the sports world pretty quickly. It’s the one topic that catches every athlete’s attention, and not always in a good way. However, I have to say that the reaction to my book by players was mostly supportive. I was told that Billy was constantly receiving my cards for him to sign. The LGBT community in San Francisco and Oakland area was hopeful, but ultimately disappointed that I was not him.

...The movie is amazing and you should go see it. One of Hollywood’s greatest writers, Aaron Sorkin wrote it, and I’m sure that Brad Pitt will finally win an Oscar for Best Actor. Not because he’s long overdue for his profession’s crowning achievement, but because it will cement my fate of having to answer this question for the rest of my life and say, no it’s not me….it’s the “other” Billy Bean(e).

Truth is, I don’t really mind the questions at all. I’m happy for Billy Beane, and his movie, but I wouldn’t trade places with him for all the money in Major League Baseball. My friends, my family, my community. I’m the luckiest guy in the world.

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If I believed it worked that way, I would support vouchers. More likely, it would allow parents to try to get their kids into better schools. For the ones that succeed, that would be great, but for the ones that fail (for reasons of numbers, lack of connections, paperwork foulups, whatever), their kids would be stuck in the rapidly decaying neighborhood school with even less motivation from administrators and politicians to improve it.

One might say "Well, those kids/parents should have made more of an effort to get into a better school." Maybe, but that platitude doesn't help the kids left behind.

In my design, there is no more "neighborhood school" that relies on politicians. I'm limiting the gov't role to setting the financing level.

I'm confident that if states set the funding levels even at 2/3 of what they currently spend per student in inner cities, there will be enough school seats for every kid.

In my design, there is no more "neighborhood school" that relies on politicians. I'm limiting the gov't role to setting the financing level.

What about the curriculum? You're not going to put kids -- and the country -- at the mercies of schools that teach that humans first walked the earth 6,000 years ago, that FDR was a Communist, and that science is a secular humanist fraud, are you?

A voucher program would allow parents to get their kids out of disfunctional schools into ones that maintain order. Why should the 80% of students who want to learn be dragged down by the incorrigibles?

Exactly right. Our current motto is "no child left behind" when maybe instead it should be "let's do what we can to let the kids that want to flourish the resources they need to excel and offer good vo-tech opportunities for the rest."

I'm pretty liberal, and while I think teacher's unions get unfairly maligned, I fully support school choice. Our current system condemns poor urban kids to terrible schools simply because of where they live. Are all charter schools great or even good? No. But almost every urban school district is terrible. Let's at least give the kids that want to do well the opportunity to do so.

There are lots of concerns such as the curriculum as SBB raises, as well as what about special ed kids, but I think a lot of that can be regulated - require any school that accepts federal voucher money to meet certain requirements.

And the ancillary effect is that urban areas no longer become completely verboten for families that are inclined to live in an urban environment but can't afford private school, thus raising property values and tax coffers for our cities.

I've read Billy Bean's book and would recommend it to anyone interested in the perspective of a gay ballplayer struggling to live a more authentic life in an unfriendly environment. Not surprisingly, Tommy Lasorda comes across as probably the most bigoted man that he comes across in MLB. He essentially shuns his son when Tommy Jr. is dying of AIDS. Other teammates, such as Brad Ausmus, are very accepting.

It's not the tightest article he's written, but Michael Lewis wrote a great article 2 + months ago in Vanity Fair about California and why it's failing, due to the excesses of the Right and the Left.

I particularly liked this quote (beginning of page 6):

I notice on his shelf a copy of Fortune magazine, with Meredith Whitney on the cover. And as he talked about the bankrupting of Vallejo, I realized that I had heard this story before, or a private-sector version of it. The people who had power in the society, and were charged with saving it from itself, had instead bled the society to death. The problem with police officers and firefighters isn’t a public-sector problem; it isn’t a problem with government; it’s a problem with the entire society. It’s what happened on Wall Street in the run-up to the subprime crisis. It’s a problem of people taking what they can, just because they can, without regard to the larger social consequences. It’s not just a coincidence that the debts of cities and states spun out of control at the same time as the debts of individual Americans. Alone in a dark room with a pile of money, Americans knew exactly what they wanted to do, from the top of the society to the bottom. They’d been conditioned to grab as much as they could, without thinking about the long-term consequences. Afterward, the people on Wall Street would privately bemoan the low morals of the American people who walked away from their subprime loans, and the American people would express outrage at the Wall Street people who paid themselves a fortune to design the bad loans

What I find devastating about this quote, especially from somebody like Lewis, who has looked at this in detail, is that unless Americans accept that no one side is immune from this rot, it can't really be fixed.

Another great two quotes (both from page 3):

In November 2005 he (ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER) called a special election that sought votes on four reforms: limiting state spending, putting an end to the gerrymandering of legislative districts, limiting public-employee-union spending on elections, and lengthening the time it took for public-school teachers to get tenure. All four propositions addressed, directly or indirectly, the state’s large and growing financial mess. All four were defeated; the votes weren’t even close. From then until the end of his time in office he was effectively gelded: the legislators now knew that the people who had elected them to behave exactly the way they were already behaving were not going to undermine them when appealed to directly. The people of California might be irresponsible, but at least they were consistent.
....

But when you look below the surface, he adds, the system is actually very good at giving Californians what they want. “What all the polls show,” says Paul (MARK PAUL, A JOURNALIST AND NON-PARTISAN THINK-THANKER WHO CO-AUTHORED A BOOK NAMED "CALIFORNIA CRACKUP"), “is that people want services and not to pay for them. And that’s exactly what they have now got.” As much as they claimed to despise their government, the citizens of California shared its defining trait: a need for debt. The average Californian, in 2011, had debts of $78,000 against an income of $43,000. The behavior was unsustainable, but, in its way, for the people, it works brilliantly. For their leaders, even in the short term, it works less well. They ride into office on great false hopes and quickly discover they can do nothing to justify those hopes

“What all the polls show,” says Paul (MARK PAUL, A JOURNALIST AND NON-PARTISAN THINK-THANKER WHO CO-AUTHORED A BOOK NAMED "CALIFORNIA CRACKUP"), “is that people want services and not to pay for them. And that’s exactly what they have now got.” As much as they claimed to despise their government, the citizens of California shared its defining trait: a need for debt.

Of course that's what they want; who wouldn't?

The left has conditioned the people to expect an all-powerful government capable of anything; the right has conditioned them to blame government for everything. So what we've got is a populace that expects way too much from government, and then b!tches like whiny b!tches when government -- inevitably -- fails to deliver.

I can see a connection between sabermetrics and right-wing politics. The desire to rationally explain events on the baseball field and the libertarian view of the world that is rationally derived from the absolute premise of individual liberty could in some cases have a similar source.

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." -Karl Rove, quoted anonymously by Ron Suskind

What about the curriculum? You're not going to put kids -- and the country -- at the mercies of schools that teach that humans first walked the earth 6,000 years ago, that FDR was a Communist, and that science is a secular humanist fraud, are you?

I'd let the parents decide.

Even kids that believed all that, but know how to read and write, do math, etc. at a HS level, would have a much better shot in this world than the products of most of our inner-city schools.

Hell, most of our current HS students don't know who FDR was. Believing he was a communist would at least require them to know something about him.

“What all the polls show,” says Paul (MARK PAUL, A JOURNALIST AND NON-PARTISAN THINK-THANKER WHO CO-AUTHORED A BOOK NAMED "CALIFORNIA CRACKUP"), “is that people want services and not to pay for them. And that’s exactly what they have now got.”

To tie the thread neatly in a bow...

If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?!

Even kids that believed all that, but know how to read and write, do math, etc. at a HS level, would have a much better shot in this world than the products of most of our inner-city schools.

OK, but what kind of shot would the world have with that kind of ignorance even more rampant than it is today?

EDIT: Of course there is plenty of ignorance resulting from the current system, but I guess you could distinguish this as "proactive" ignorance, which is to say an explicit belief in things that are simply not true.

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." -Karl Rove, quoted anonymously by Ron Suskind

Would you find retaining the governmental ability to set educational standards and certify schools, while it abstains from actually running them, to be an acceptable compromise? Because I think that would be much better than anything-goes.

You do realize that a lot of journalists quietly believe that Ron Suskind fabricated that quote, right? In any event, it most certainly did not come from Karl Rove. You're just making that up out of whole cloth.

Thinking someone is lying doesn't make it indisputable that they are lying. Maybe he was, it obviously can't be proven.

Once you grant the "in any event", how would you know "most certainly" that it didn't or didn't come from Rove, exactly?

The reason education should be public and not private is because it is the social duty of everyone to educate everyone ELSES children. No matter how f'd up their parents are, where they live, how much money they have.

But - and this is just as true of well-off suburban repubicans and hippie liberal socialists (i.e, many of the white parents at my son's public school in SF) - when push comes to shove, people will always favor their own children over others.

I actually sometimes think PRIVATE schools should be banned - and if you don't like your kids' school options you need to get involved personally and fix the damn school. Note that this does happen a lot here in San Francisco, where we have many economically mixed public schools and the wealthier parents shoulder much of the load / funding gaps. However, there is a big free rider effect, so that the schools with wealthy, involved parents get over-enrolled, and you still get a balkanization across districts.

Probably a biological drive - but that is (IMHO) one of the reasons why we have laws and regulations - to curb biological drives that might be harmful to society or individuals as a whole.

Which again goes back to Lewis' (very telling) quotes and why many people feel that unfettered capitalism would a social disaster.

A fully-funded voucher program (government pays for 100% of a child's education, regardless of where they choose to go, and/or every school's tuition is set at the same level) would be an interesting experiment, if for no other reason than to see if the competition theory works. The problem with the voucher systems that have already been tried is that they've only been partially funded, so poor families just end up sending their kids right back to the same schools they would otherwise and wealthier families continue to send their kids to private schools at a handy government-funded discount of $5,000 or whatever. But that's what they were intended to do - many of the voucher programs run so far certainly weren't intended to improve schools.

I remain wary - privatization has certainly been a mixed bag in America, there's little evidence that privatized systems in general are any more efficient/have less corruption/show better results than public systems (the private school system is NOT a good example, as it's a heavily cherry-picked population), and in the end it's not really about who goes to which school as it is a question of what people/the government prioritizes. Despite a few loud voices, we just don't really care (yet) that our K-12 schools are terrible. We've decided we have higher priorities.

The reason education should be public and not private is because it is the social duty of everyone to educate everyone ELSES children. No matter how f'd up their parents are, where they live, how much money they have.

Well I agree that we have a responsibility to educate everyone's kids. I just don't see why the school down the street should be the only free option, particularly when it sucks.

I actually sometimes think PRIVATE schools should be banned - and if you don't like your kids' school options you need to get involved personally and fix the damn school.

And this would just lead to even further suburban sprawl and greater de facto segregation as white suburban families move further away. The problem now isn't private schools. The problem is a tremendous disparity in public schools between rich districts and poor districts (and actually recent studies have shown our affluent districts don't even test well compared to other nations, so maybe those public schools aren't so hot either?).

The reason education should be public and not private is because it is the social duty of everyone to educate everyone ELSES children. No matter how f'd up their parents are, where they live, how much money they have.

This I agree with. The problem with the it-should-be-left-up-to-the-parents thing is that in the case of education (and most other things that determine the kid's future), the kid's rights are much, much more important than the parent's. The kid is the one that has to go out in the world and make it (or not) with whatever tools or stamps of approval they're given as a young person, and live in the world with all the rest of humanity. Fetishizing the parent's rights to disregard their children's education, or create little carbon copies of themselves, or whatever, at the expense of the kid whose life it is after all, is the absolute wrong way to go in my opinion.

Instead of having municipalities fund public enducation through property taxes, why not have all tax money levied for education funding go to the state into a big pot that would then be distributed equally to all school districts? There would still be disparities between states but it wouldn't be nearly as bad as the inter-municipal differences we see now, right?

Well the reason is geographical. For obvious reasons, we don't want 8-year-olds to have a full scale commute to school. The best solution isn't to give them the option to travel an hour back and forth every day to go to the good school, which most of them won't do regardless, it's to fix the school down the street.

Instead of having municipalities fund public enducation through property taxes, why not have all tax money levied for education funding go to the state into a big pot that would then be distributed equally to all school districts? There would still be disparities between states but it wouldn't be nearly as bad as the inter-municipal differences we see now, right?

That's what my plan envisions. Agree 100% No reason for Scarsdale to spend $25,000 per student and some upstate rural area $6,000.

Would you find retaining the governmental ability to set educational standards and certify schools, while it abstains from actually running them, to be an acceptable compromise? Because I think that would be much better than anything-goes.

Yes, as long as the certification is reasonable, and not a back door way to reinstate bureaucratic and teachers' union control.

Would you cross state lines with your proposal? Would Kansas City, Kansas kids have the right to go to the best school they can find across the border in Missouri?

If you'd allow that, you might as well make the feds responsible for it all and you can go to school anywhere in the United States. If it's not federalized, you'll start hearing crap states complaining about "brain drain" and good states b!tching about educating the kids of other states.

Yes, as long as the certification is reasonable, and not a back door way to reinstate bureaucratic and teachers' union control.

What does this mean?

The primary goal of our education system should be for kids to grow up to be smarter and more rational than their idiotic parents, and to transcend the silly superstitions to which so many of their parents cling.

The parents of this nation aren't remotely qualified to develop curriculums for their childrens' study. It's incomprehensible that you'd think they are.

Let's take this discussion from another politics thread and into the real world.

I live in Oakland, CA, in a semi-sketchy semi-nice neighborhood. The local public schools have zero white children. I live a few blocks from the border of Piedmont, which has a good public school, and the price of a home accordingly shoots up a couple hundred thousand bucks immediately across this border, and directly into the "we cannot afford it" zone. I just moved from a really nice neighborhood in San Francisco, where we could not afford a home, but even this place, which was full of Pregnancy Pilates studios and gourmet cheese stores, had virtually zero white children in the local public schools, and most residents there were ready to move down to Palo Alto near their high paying tech jobs when their kids got older.

So as it is, we kind of figure that we're going to have to move to Iowa or northern Vermont in a few years, when our yet unborn child hits the schooling years. I realize that I'll be personally contributing to some of the nationwide problems discussed in this thread, but I'm not seeing what other options I have.

The primary goal of our education system should be for kids to grow up to be smarter and more rational than their idiotic parents, and to transcend the silly superstitions to which so many of their parents cling.

The parents of this nation aren't remotely qualified to develop curriculums for their childrens' study. It's incomprehensible that you'd think they are.

It means I don't want the certification process dictating a curriculum, or mandating only UFT or NEA teachers.

So you open the system up, let everyone go where they want, everyone picks Piedmont ... but there's only so many spots given the physical plant and teacher talent and the educational imperative not to let classes get too big.

Next is a lottery to ration the spots, and some kids lose. What happens to them?

And by the way, this scene plays out intra-district in major cities all over the country. NYC residents can get themselves in a lottery for virtually any district in the city. (**)

(**) And once you're in a public school, you can move out of the district and your kids can still go to the school.

It means I don't want the certification process dictating a curriculum

What does "dictating a curriculum" mean? Everyone pretty much knows what kids should be taught -- math, mainstream science, great books, English composition, etc. It really isn't a mystery, and there's no serious doubt. I suppose things get a little tricky with human sexuality and its interaction with science/health but that's less than 1% of any serious system of study.

It sounds like you want to reserve the right for schools to teach kids, at the very least, political ideology -- if not outright bvllshit.

I just moved from a really nice neighborhood in San Francisco, where we could not afford a home, but even this place, which was full of Pregnancy Pilates studios and gourmet cheese stores, had virtually zero white children in the local public schools, and most residents there were ready to move down to Palo Alto near their high paying tech jobs when their kids got older.

I think the more important question is if you are going to name your unborn son Preserved Fish.

More seriously, I haven't heard what the schools are like in this neighborhood, just that they are full of non-white kids.

@76 it goes without saying that the money/effort should NOT be distributed by locale. I didn't state it explicitly, I thought it was obvious. In fact unlike @79 I think it has to be distributed UNEVENLY.

"Problem" kids - and we know what that means in a dog-whistle sense - need more money, not less. And by money I mean essentially merit-based teacher salaries and smaller class sizes. If you want to work the free market into the system, make sure that the teachers with the toughest (most important!) jobs at the roughest schools are the best paid.

Not sure about state lines. I mean, why stop there? Shouldn't we - as people - want to educate the poor and downtrodden of Mexico (and Canada, eh) as well.

I've been through the Manhattan private school process; a lot/most of those schools are jokes. No report cards until 8th grade, no expectations, no distinctions among the best and the mediocre, basically a bunch of softies sitting around telling each other how great they are. The deal is simple: you pay us a bunch of money, we'll stamp your ticket with our name, enhancing your "brand."

FWIW, I went to one of those schools, as did three of my siblings. That characterization could not be less consistent with what we experienced.

Just to put an anecdote on the other side from 95: I went to one of these schools too, K-8. That characterization could not be more consistent with what I experienced. It was an ostensible school for the gifted; the scholarship kids were there to boost up the academic achievements/reputation so the school could sell itself to rich people. It was actually a really well thought-out, good system.

SBB (@89) hits on an important nuance. It's imperative that this doesn't happen. You cannot just reward the successful schools, unless you simulatanously make them (physically!) bigger.

Although perhaps class size is the answer there... as the school gets better, it gets more popular, so the class sizes get bigger, the teachers get overworked, and decided to move to the school with smaller class sizes and worse kids for more pay.

So as it is, we kind of figure that we're going to have to move to Iowa or northern Vermont in a few years, when our yet unborn child hits the schooling years. I realize that I'll be personally contributing to some of the nationwide problems discussed in this thread, but I'm not seeing what other options I have.

99: For sure, not saying any of us should be listened to, but human minds work that way, so I thought I would mention my experience on the other side. Carry on with actual science.

I think to be perfectly honest people place way too much emphasis on the type of schooling. Schooling through 8th grade is not really about learning facts, it's about learning social interaction and figuring out what kind of person you like (to be friends with). Some schools are better than others, even significantly, at preparing kids for standardized tests (which I'm not necessarily belittling; this involves actual learning of facts). But those facts aren't really relevant to life most of the time. Obviously it's not totally irrelevant, but I honestly don't think that within the general range of schools in this country that it really matters so much.

96 - That's totally fair. In my experience, there are two distinct "branches" of NYC private schools. There are the touchy-feely ones that promote individuality and self-esteem at the expense of giving actual grades, promoting work-ethic and achievement etc...and then there's the ones we went to. Where they basically work you to death starting at a fairly young age.

This email was not intended to sanctimonious, and I'm fairly certain the second category can have negative ramifications for some or all of the students. Just my two cents.

What does "dictating a curriculum" mean? Everyone pretty much knows what kids should be taught -- math, mainstream science, great books, English composition, etc. It really isn't a mystery, and there's no serious doubt. I suppose things get a little tricky with human sexuality and its interaction with science/health but that's less than 1% of any serious system of study.

It sounds like you want to reserve the right for schools to teach kids, at the very least, political ideology -- if not outright bvllshit.

In my experience, there are two distinct "branches" of NYC private schools.

That's what I've heard, too. The ones I took a peek at happened to be the touchy-feely kind (**); at that point we just decided to take the forceful recommendation of the private preschool headmaster and send the kid to the neighborhood PS. (The only other contender was a French-speaking school which would have been a disaster.)

(**) One, embarassingly so, the spine of one of the senior guys' presentation to hundreds of parents being the insistence on the "genius" LeBron James demonstrates by the mere act of dribbling the basketball to the floor while moving -- the physics and brainpower of it all being something akin to splitting the atom, I guess. This by way of justifying the no report cards until 8th grade policy.

Set the amount equal for all children in the state (you could adjust for cost of living). That way, you wouldn't have rich suburbs spending $25,000 per student, and rural areas $8,000.

snapper, I'm not sure I understand how your proposal would address this last issue. Would parents be prohibited from spending more than $8,000 on their children's tuition? Presumably richer parents would still spend significantly more than poorer parents; they would just do so by using the $8,000 voucher and paying the difference out-of-pocket.

Although perhaps class size is the answer there... as the school gets better, it gets more popular, so the class sizes get bigger, the teachers get overworked, and decided to move to the school with smaller class sizes and worse kids for more pay.

As the school gets bigger, it takes the additional money and builds additional classrooms/hires additional teachers. And other schools start emulating its methods and begin attracting students. I imagine this is the idea, right?

snapper, I'm not sure I understand how your proposal would address this last issue. Would parents be prohibited from spending more than $8,000 on their children's tuition? Presumably richer parents would still spend significantly more than poorer parents; they would just do so by using the $8,000 voucher and paying the difference out-of-pocket.

The voucher would presumably be for more than $8,000, $8,000 being what really poor districts spend. As of 2010, the national avg. was $10,250 per student, NY spent $17,100.

You could go one of two ways. You could prohibit schools that take the vouchers from charging more, or you could let parents supplement.

If the voucher was, say $10-12,000 per student for a regular student (disabled students would need to get more) I'm fine with prohibiting schools from taking addt'l payments above the voucher amt. You'd also give higher vouchers for HS, lower for Elem. as the costs vary.

Private schools charging $25-35,000 a head are ridiculous rip-offs. If you want to pay for gold plated foofaraw, you don't get the voucher.

In NY? Basically the extreme left's. Abortion is a natural right. Anyone with a moral objection to homosexual marriage is a bigot, etc.

This is not extreme left, sorry snapper.

Hahah, very close but no cigar. My older sister went to Trinity for high school though. I did not envy her high school experience.

I went to a small (good, for what it was, and the area) public school in a town of 1400. When I heard in college (mostly, sometimes before at model congresses and UNs) about high schools like Trinity I nearly wept from jealously, so, grass greener and all that.

Private schools charging $25-35,000 a head are ridiculous rip-offs. If you want to pay for gold plated foofaraw, you don't get the voucher.

Why are they rip-offs? The idea sort of falls apart here, because it really doesn't have the courage of its own convictions. You'll still have a group of schools -- the ones not open to, ahem, "voucher" kids -- that will endeavor to be, and likely succeed in being, a self-perpetuating elite.

And what about the smart, teachable inner-city kids saddled with shitty parents? In the voucher system, other smart, teachable kids are going to flee, which makes their school worse.

I went to a small (good, for what it was, and the area) public school in a town of 1400. When I heard in college (mostly, sometimes before at model congresses and UNs) about high schools like Trinity I nearly wept from jealously, so, grass greener and all that.

Don't get me wrong. I remain forever grateful for the education I received (and my sister does as well). It was truly life-altering to be exposed to some of those things at an early age. My lack of envy concerning my sister's Trinity experience was really from the perspective of a 12 year old whose main life priorities were buying a new CD or shooting hoops with his friends.

There are no reasons that aren't inherently religious reasons that the government should have benefits only for straight marriage.

And as far as public policy, once you've delved into religious reasons, you've admitted you don't have good reasons.

We've had this debate before, let's not again. All I'm saying is the system won't work if the state imposes what moral beliefs a school has to teach.

Why are they rip-offs? The idea sort of falls apart here, because it really doesn't have the courage of its own convictions. You'll still have a group of schools -- the ones not open to, ahem, "voucher" kids -- that will endeavor to be, and likely succeed in being, a self-perpetuating elite.

Because there's no way to spend that much money without wasting much of it. If you pay teachers $100,000 all in (with benes) and they avg. 20 students per class, that's $5,000 per student. Double it for overhead and admin, and you're at $10,000.

Don't get me wrong. I remain forever grateful for the education I received (and my sister does as well). It was truly life-altering to be exposed to some of those things at an early age. My lack of envy concerning my sister's Trinity experience was really from the perspective of a 12 year old whose main life priorities were buying a new CD or shooting hoops with his friends.

Yeah, I absolutely didn't mean to imply you had any other attitude, it was primarily to bring up how crazy different some experiences are.

Is this taught without qualification in the New York state, or New York City standard curriculum? I highly, highly doubt it.

Is this taught without qualification in the New York state, or New York City standard curriculum? I highly, highly doubt it.

Obviously it has no bearing on how kids younger than 10 are taught and is, accordingly, entirely inapposite.

I'm just giving examples.

If you even mandate that schools can't teach that abortion is immoral, you cut off many, many potential schools based on religion. Religious based private schools have proven to be among the most efficient and effective, especially in poor, inner city areas.

Right, but you gave a couple hot-button talking point examples of things that really aren't part of the state of New York's or New York City's school curriculum. The schools in New York don't "teach" that abortion "is" a natural right or that anyone with an objection to homosexual marriage "is" a bigot.

So I'm kind of baffled as to why you suggested the schools do teach those things.

If you even mandate that schools can't teach that abortion is immoral, you cut off many, many potential schools based on religion. Religious based private schools have proven to be among the most efficient and effective, especially in poor, inner city areas.

Ah, I see ... you want the purported efficacy of a group of religious schools to be the Trojan Horse by which the schools' religion can be taught. And to make the religious schools seem more effective, you're going to invent a bunch of bugaboos about the awful, immoral things the public schools are teaching kids.

Ah, I see ... you want the purported "efficacy" of a group of religious schools to be the Trojan Horse by which the schools' religion can be taught. And to make the religious schools seem more effective, you're going to invent a bunch of bugaboos about the awful things the public schools are teaching kids.

I'm perfectly happy with their being atheist schools, and secular humanist schools, or whatever teaching their morality too.

I just think excluding religious schools is a huge diservice to the students you're trying to help.

Today I learned that, apparently, I live in school choice heaven here in Minneapolis. We've started looking into school choices for next year for my soon to be kindergartner. We've got open enrollment for public schools and lots of charter schools. School request forms & lottery forms are due in early Feb I think, so we are trying to tours, etc, before the Holidays. Some of the public schools are sketchy, of course, but not in my particular area. We've got it narrowed down to two neighborhood schools, three public schools that are farther away (we'd have to have some luck with a lottery to get in), and two charter schools from a completely different area of the city. There is at least one in each category that is very appealing. I think that hard part of the process won't be finding a good school, but deciding which good school to attend. For as great as school choice is, it was nice to grow up in a small town where you didn't have to consider dozens of choices....you went the "the school".

Also for those who love vouchers & charters, busing is incredible expensive for the schools when there is all these choices, and pain for all of society (lots of buses going down residential streets and clogging up regular traffic every day). On my block, kids attend at least 7 different schools, so that is 7 different buses coming through twice a day.

Also the cost of living is dramatically different in different parts of a state, so flat funding models don't necessarily work wrt teacher salaries, etc. And, some kids are more expensive to educate than others. English language learners, special ed kids, and kids from troubled backgrounds in particular. A big problem with school choice is that non-public schools can say no to whoever they want and leave the burdensome kids for someone else. I don't think that happens all that much, but it is part of the system, and the most expensive kids to educate are very expensive to educate. I'm very conflicted about the possibility of choosing a charter school because of that.

I learned how to interract in a small, poor, public, unionized-teacher school. :-O

(With no ####### AP courses!)

I went to a big, poor, public school with no ####### AP courses. However, the school being fairly big meant I pretty much only interacted with other kids like me. Despite my nerdiness, I never really got picked on because the size of the school allowed me to just hang out with other people in "smart-person" classes.

(I don't think this is necessarily a good thing, by the way. I was a real arrogant jackass after high school. I've come pretty hard down to earth since then after other foibles in my life. I'm a better person for it now.)

(Also, my definition of 'big' is big for New Hampshire, which was about 5000 students, only about 2/3 of which end up graduating.)

I'm perfectly happy with their being atheist schools, and secular humanist schools, or whatever teaching their morality too.

I just think excluding religious schools is a huge diservice to the students you're trying to help.

The idea that a normal humanist curriculum is a product of the "ideology" of the "extreme left" is bizarre, to say the least. One's perspective must be to the right of, say, Franco to think such a thing.

If Catholic schools are spending enough time discussing abortion and homosexuality to matter, that alone is reason enough not to fund them, regardless of the content. Those things don't belong in school, beyond maybe a day or two survey in philosophy or political ethics or, maybe, something along the lines of "Contemporary Moral Issues." In the latter, all serious points of view, including the Catholic ones, should be presented in public schools.

Why is it so shocking that Beane is a republican? Have folks never met smart conservatives, or is the portrayal of conservatives as backwards and dumb just all-pervasive?

A "smart conservative" (at least, as "conservative" is conventionally defined in US politics in 2011) is essentially oxymoronic, of course, and that slight tweaking some genius in these parts noted not long ago really does say most of it: "A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop! I've got mine!"

Any more questions I can help you with?

Politics in baseball are awfully contradictory, anyway. For a game run by rich old white Republicans, they sure act like a bunch of socialists when it suits them.

No different, though, than it's always been. King had it right: socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor.

Likewise, many of my liberal friends who are baseball fans are very quick to ##### about the ridiculous millionaire contracts ballplayers get

I hear this complaint from liberals about CEOs, but never about baseball players. I personally hear more conservative personalities (literally, not Rush, etc.) get down on baseball for salaries.

Dunno where I'd fit on the spectrum, though surely not conservative, and I loathe the "ridiculous millionaire contracts ballplayers get". Well, actually, I loathe the lack of a marginal tax rate in the happy neighborhood of 90+ percent on million dollar salaries. Fwiw, my liberal friends in general think paying millions of dollars in salary to anyone is a bad joke, ceo or ballplayer.

A "smart conservative" (at least, as "conservative" is conventionally defined in US politics in 2011) is essentially oxymoronic, of course, and that slight tweaking some genius in these parts noted not long ago really does say most of it: "A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop! I've got mine!"

Almost all of conservativism today, from tax cuts to the "war on terror" to US policy toward Israel, is viewed by the mass of its adherents as divinely-inspire. No smart person signs up for such a thing on its intellectual merits.

More seriously, I haven't heard what the schools are like in this neighborhood, just that they are full of non-white kids.

Lassus, I was wondering if anyone would respond to this. Unfortunately, many schools these days are virtually segregated, and those don't tend to be the good schools. A lot of the suburban vs inner city school talk is also white vs black school talk. I chose to address this crassly I find it funny when people try to talk about this stuff without acknowledging the race issue.

In my case, the schools within my districts are indeed ranked very low.

I own it. It's been about five or six years since I read it. It's relatively good. It's not Ball Four or a masterpiece like that and in many ways it's fairly by-the-book. However, it is an honest portrayal of Bean's slow realization that he was gay and struggles he had to reconcile this with his athletic prowess and jock culture in high school and then the minor leagues. It then moves through his efforts to remain closeted during his time in professional and the pressures and stresses this placed on him during his career.

So as it is, we kind of figure that we're going to have to move to Iowa or northern Vermont in a few years...

Pittsburgh is nice, and the housing is very affordable. You can get a three-bedroom place in good repair in a top school district for less than $200k.

Keep it in mind, anyway.

Anecdotal, to be sure, but I taught at the University level in Iowa, good school, good area. I had probably 240 freshmen come through my various classes, most of them natives of Iowa, having gone to the better Iowa high schools. Literally half of them couldn't write a paragraph, or even a sentence, worth a damn. I don't know why, now, but at the time I was shocked at how bad it was. Of the half that could write, there was the usual handful who knew how to write well. The rest wrote serviceably.

Perhaps elsewhere it's so utterly dreadful that the small sample of Iowans I came to know were fine writers overall compared to the rest, but if so, then "good writing" at the high school senior level must mean only "doesn't eat the pen".

snapper, in one post talks about not sending kids to schools with "wack job ideologies", yet in another post, advocates sending kids to Catholic schools.

Are they still teaching kids that Jews killed Christ, in Catholic schools? Serious question, because they were teaching that in the 60's and '70s.

All of my kids go to Catholic schools. My wife is the principal of our Catholic K-8 school (after spending 12 years as a public school teacher). I'll just say that your knowledge of Catholic school education would probably demand that you stay quiet on the subject.

So the answer is "no"? Good. But that wasn't the case back in the 60's and 70's, according to the family that lived across the street from me. I went to the E.P. Tileston school in Mattapan, and they went to St. Angela's, in Mattapan, and they were taught exactly that, back then. It caused a bit of friction.

Craig in MN -- great post in 127, agree wholeheartedly. What part of Minneapolis are you in? I just bought a house in southwest, expecting the first child this winter. Feeling thankful that Southwest High is well-regarded, but I'm definitely nervous about pre-high school decisions. And I desperately long for the simplicity of growing up in a one-school town.

I went to Catholic school in the late 1960s-late 1970s, and apparently the entire faculty at both schools did not get the "Jews killed Christ" memo. Shocking that to a man - er, to a nun - they all missed the boat on that one.

I do recall learning a song called, "And They'll Know We Are Christians By Our Love..." which I now can't get out of my head but which doesn't exactly fit the meme, either.

Apparently, they stopped in 1965. Before '65, it was taught. Now, did they unteach it in 1965? I doubt it. "Oh, by the way, kids, what we told you last year...we were wrong. Never mind about that." The bell wasn't "unrung", in my neighborhood.

As unfortunate as that was, and as lingering a sentiment as it may be for some, I'm sure that kids aren't taught that today, and haven't been for many years.

Congrats on the child, spycake. It's an adventure. So is home ownership, I guess.

I live in Seward/Longfellow area. It's a great area. Everyone recommends all of the Southwest schools, but there's no way we are busing all the way there, and I don't think there is much chance we'd get in anyway. They are all good schools over there though.

I typed up that original post and I forgot to include the main point. We get a lot of people talking about how bad schools are in theory and all the theoretical reform options, but I don't see the problems in reality in the bulk of my city. There are places I probably wouldn't send my kid, but there are also lots of other options, so I don't have to send her there if I don't want to. Do people in most cities not have options, or is Minneapolis that much ahead of the game? I'm not seeing a lot of actual experiences discussed anywhere, so I don't know.

Don't despair on the Oakland Public school situation. I'm in your exact situation, just about 7 years ahead of you.

We were fortunate and got our kids into a great charter school not far away (NOCCS). Of course we had to defy the odds and win a lottery to get in there.

Of the other families I know, who did not choose to go the charter route, every one of them ended up in a school they are happy with eventually. OUSD will almost always assign you to your nearest school no matter what schools you "choose" in the options process, if you have the nerve and patience to wait list at your chosen school it seems to always work out.